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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24802621">Mayest</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/pseuds/ensorcel'>ensorcel</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Devil Wears Prada (2006)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, F/F, Femslash, Judaism, Older Woman/Younger Woman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:54:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,995</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24802621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/pseuds/ensorcel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda's Jewish. Kind of. Sort of. She hasn't been to Schul in years.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Miranda Priestly &amp; Andrea Sachs, Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>132</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mayest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Twentieth Century Fox and Laura Weisberger. Any characters recognized don't belong to me. Also, I am not Jewish, so please correct me if I made any errors!</p><p>Great thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia">zigostia</a> for saving this story.</p><p>EDIT (22/06/2020): The lovely <a href="https://xvnot15.tumblr.com/">xvnot15</a> pointed out my mistakes on this story regarding Miranda's Judaism and they were kind enough to help me fix them. I sincerely apologize for my errors. Once again, please let me know if there was anything I missed.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Miriam watched as Mommy carefully gathered her hair underneath the flimsy cap, then slipped the wig on, as natural as putting on a jacket for the day. Mother smiled at her in the mirror. </p><p>“We’ll get you fitted for one once you’re old enough, darling,” she crooned and Miriam beamed. Mommy smoothed out Miriam’s black dress as Miriam kicked her legs back and forth, sitting on the side of the bed. Mommy quickly adjusted her hair and smiled at Miriam in the mirror. Miriam kicked the bed so hard that she bounced a little and Mommy just chuckled. </p><p>“You look lovely,” she said, picking Miriam up and off the bed. “Almost time to go.” </p><p>Miriam held on tightly to her mother’s hand all the way to the car and all the way to the cemetery. Daddy sat beside her. Cass and Nathan were in the other car. </p><p>Mommy clutched a handkerchief in her hand and Daddy stared straight forward. It was a bright day as they shuffled into the chapel. Her eyes drank in the arches and sunlight streaming in through the windows. </p><p>Mommy led them down the aisle to the front. Miriam squirmed in her seat. It was hot. She swung her legs back and forth on the pew and let go of her mother’s hand. Daddy and Nathan sat on the other side of the room as Cass joined them on theirs. Miriam felt very small. The chapel seemed to become bigger. Miriam grabbed Mommy’s hand again. It was warm. </p><p>She watched as Mommy and Daddy and Cass and Nathan began to recite something she didn’t quite understand but the words flowed over her, ba bum, ba bum, ba bum, like her heartbeat. Nathan winked at her. She thought about how hot it was and when it would be cooler again.</p><p>Mommy was crying and Daddy was staring straight ahead and Cass was sitting with her back like a rod and Nathan glared down at his shoes. </p><p>There was a big brown box at the front. After Mommy and Daddy and Cass and Nathan stopped speaking, Daddy and Nathan shuffled forward towards it. Mommy told Miriam that Grandma was in there, but she didn’t quite understand why. Mommy was crying again and Miriam wasn’t quite sure why. </p><p>She thought about Grandma and how she always gave her sweets. Then she thought about how hot it was and how her dress was starting to feel itchy. Nathan winked at her again. </p><p>She wasn’t crying but Mommy was. Daddy and Nathan shouldered the big box, walking out of the chapel but all Miriam could think about was how hot it was and how sweaty her hands were getting. She wanted to hold Mommy’s hand but Mommy was still crying and Nathan and Daddy were almost out of the room.</p><p>The sun shone brightly that day and it was very hot. </p><p>Miriam didn’t hold her mother’s hand on the way home. </p><p> </p><p>Miriam was in their small living room and right now, it felt impossibly smaller. Mommy and Daddy told her that she needed to sit Shiva for the rest of the week but all she could see was that she was here for a whole <em> week </em>and Miriam was never quite good at sitting still. </p><p>People were coming in and out and Miriam really just wanted to be in her room with Cass where they would play games and she didn’t need to see everyone. People would just say things and Miriam didn’t know how to respond so she just smiled as big as she could because Mommy always said it was okay to smile, right? </p><p>It was hot and Miriam was starting to sweat in her nice dress.</p><p>She wanted everyone to leave. </p><p> </p><p>Miriam’s family didn’t have a lot of money. Miriam knew this because she didn’t have a lunch bag and the other students did. She had two dresses, the one she wore to Grandma’s funeral where she didn’t know how to pray, and another, a lovely pink that Mother dug out from the on sale section at the department store. </p><p>The other girls all had many dresses. Katie wore a new one everyday to school. Miriam caught a bit of the fabric the other day when they were sitting down for story time. It was very soft. Very different from her own dress. </p><p>Miriam had only two dresses but she knew how to pray and recite Kaddish and how to properly light the candle at Hanukkah and she was going to do something with her life. She was going to make it big somewhere bigger than this small town in Detroit where she could buy more dresses and a nice house for her family. </p><p>So her dresses were never quite as nice and she never had more than two and she was the only Jewish girl in a community filled with Catholics and sometimes she messed up her prayers because the synagogue could become incredibly hot but Miriam Princhek was going to make it somewhere, goddamnit.</p><p> </p><p>Nathan left when Miriam was thirteen and Cass was fifteen and he was just barely seventeen. Just upped and walked out the door without much of a goodbye and Miriam didn’t know until the morning when she was eating breakfast at a table that was very clearly sans-Nathan. </p><p>She cried because she was thirteen and didn’t know why her older brother would just leave like that, without telling her, without saying goodbye and Cass didn’t cry at all. She heard Mother sobbing at night but didn’t say anything because what on Earth was she supposed to say? </p><p>Father barely noticed and life went on in the Princhek household until Cass was on a date with her boyfriend and they were driving home from the movie theatre and a drunk driver just rammed into them, <em> BAM</em>, nothing to it and all of a sudden Miriam was at her second funeral for her older sister who was just about to turn sixteen, who wanted to marry her boyfriend and move out of Detroit. </p><p>Miriam didn’t cry because she was fourteen and a big girl and Cass would’ve smacked her round the head if she did. </p><p>This time, she knew every word of Kaddish by heart, but this time, she stumbled a little because Nathan wasn’t there to wink at her and Mother wasn’t crying and Father was. She wore one of her mother’s black dresses and felt very grown up even though she wasn’t wearing a wig because she wasn’t married yet—it’d be your turn soon, Miriam, Mother would say. </p><p>It was a hot day because death seemed to follow her in the summer and the chapel still didn’t have air conditioning and Miriam’s hands were getting sweaty and her dress was starting to itch. </p><p>Nathan wasn’t there to carry the coffin and Miriam wasn’t allowed to. </p><p>God had kind of fucked them on this one, hadn’t He? Not even sixteen and Cassidy Princhek was lowered into the grave. She completely missed the rabbi’s words. Shiva was a goddamn wash—what the hell were all these people wishing her long life for when Cass was gone at fucking sixteen?—and Miriam finally understood why Nathan left. </p><p>She figured she didn’t like God that much.</p><hr/><p>Miranda was now twenty-six and hadn’t gone by the name of Miriam in nearly six years. (She switched when she realised that no one in fashion kept their real name and Miranda certainly wasn’t going to break that rule.) </p><p>Associate editor at <em> Vogue</em>, she hasn’t gone to Schul since she was seventeen and doesn’t quite think about it until a coworker casually mentions at lunch that she’s excited for church. </p><p>Miranda didn’t quite like God but she wasn’t sure if it was because of Cass or Nathan or Mother or Father or the fact that the synagogue was always very hot. </p><p>It wasn’t until Samuel mentioned that he wanted to get married in a church that Miranda considered maybe, just maybe, she didn’t dislike God as much as she’d thought. </p><p>But she swallowed her pride and was married in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest who did interfaith marriages without conversion into a Catholic family because Cass was dead, Nathan was gone, Father didn’t care, and Mother was too ill to make it.</p><p>The next year her father keeled over of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three, much too young (but not as young as almost-sixteen) and Miranda became Miriam once again for a day and she was Jewish for another day too. </p><p>Samuel didn’t come with her because she’d asked and besides, he was busy with work. He was always busy with work, but honestly, she couldn’t say anything because she was always busy with work as well.</p><p>Her third funeral she didn’t pray but she did hold her mother’s hand so that had to have meant something, right? She still knew the words to Kaddish by heart and she didn’t stumble like she did last time. It was painfully hot again because God seemed to like taking her family in the summer and Miranda had no clue why. </p><p>She didn’t pray this time even though Nathan was there to wink at her and Nathan was there to hold their mother’s hand on the way home and make sure she didn’t crumble in her grief. She didn’t stay for Shiva because she didn’t want to but mainly because she just couldn’t.</p><p>Miranda was twenty-seven and she hadn’t liked God since she was fourteen but she prayed before she went to bed that night, hoping that He wouldn’t take another from her. </p><p> </p><p>Samuel came home with another woman’s perfume—God, what a cliche, how like a movie—and Miranda flung everything of his out onto the street and yanked up the phone to call her lawyer. </p><p>She wondered if it was punishment for becoming semi-Catholic and not Jewish but also found that she couldn’t really care because she was down one marriage and thirty-one and single. </p><p>She didn’t call her mother because she doubted she could remember that her youngest—no, only—daughter was married and she didn’t call Nathan because a decade away did that to siblings. </p><p>She wasn’t famous yet, so this divorce didn’t hit any headlines and no one was threatening her job and honestly, most of her co-workers probably didn’t even know that she was married in the first place. </p><p>Miranda thought of maybe going to Schul but remembered that she had no clue where the closest synagogue was. </p><p>Well. If God thought this was going to make her like Him, goddamn how wrong he was. </p><p> </p><p>Miranda was thirty-three when she remarried to a perfectly nice, atheist doctor who maybe wanted kids but mostly wanted them to be happy and they weren’t married in a church and Miranda didn’t have to face any sort of conversation about her Judaism or lack thereof. </p><p>She hadn’t been to Schul in just around sixteen years and she had no plans to break that streak. </p><p>(But she prayed to God on her wedding night and begged Him to let her keep this like He let her keep Mother and Nathan.) </p><p>It wasn’t until the twins were born that she truly, properly prayed because she had two beautiful angels in her arms tonight and there was absolutely nothing that could make her let them go. </p><p>Henry sat slumped in a chair beside her, snoring softly as the sun started to rise through the hospital window and Miranda felt something in her chest akin to warmth. </p><p>She bowed her head and whispered her prayer to her daughters and put look for a synagogue on her to do list. </p><p>She was thirty-five and Miranda didn’t hate God. </p><p> </p><p>Miranda let herself hate God just a little when Henry said he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce, but not too much because she still had Cassidy and Caroline. </p><p>They parted ways amicably and nothing like Samuel and Miranda hugged her daughters tight that night. </p><p>She was forty-one and only hated God a little bit and hadn’t gone to Schul in nearly twenty-five years. </p><p> </p><p>Stephen was Boston-Irish-Catholic with a heavy emphasis on the former and a lapse on the latter. He too hadn’t gone to church since his childhood. Miranda’s daughters were raised atheist and without any knowledge that their mother had a family outside of their own. </p><p>Stephen had a son from his first marriage and his left ear was slightly bigger than his right but he was charming and nice and well, Miranda hadn’t been charmed in quite some time. </p><p>He was classy, fancy, with extravagant dinners from his Wall Street income and the kind of man Miranda spent years rejecting because between <em> Runway </em> and the twins, what else did she need? </p><p>He was a good kisser and Miranda felt a warmth in her chest she hadn’t felt since her daughters were born. </p><p>She hadn’t talked to Nathan in five years and her mother in even more. </p><p>She was still slightly bitter with God but she forgot everything about it when Stephen kissed her and took her home for the night. </p><p>When he dropped to one knee, it was easy. Too easy. </p><p>They weren’t married in a church or at Schul but in a courtroom on a hot summer day because there was just something about that in Miranda’s life that she wasn’t quite able to control. </p><p>She was forty-eight and didn’t quite care for God anymore. </p><hr/><p>Andrea Sachs pranced into her life in a pair of the ugliest shoes Miranda’d ever seen and the frumpiest blazer Runway had ever laid its eyes on, but when she dropped the seventh <em> Harry Potter </em> book on Miranda’s desk with a smile and a polite “Anything else?”, Miranda was forced to reconsider. </p><p>Andrea was Catholic of some sort and when they were taking notes in the office late one night, she let it slip that her parents were nagging her to find a church to go to and Miranda almost blurted out “me too” but caught herself. </p><p>Stephen divorced her when she was in Paris and she swore to God from the balcony of her ridiculously expensive hotel room with a glass of scotch in hand. </p><p>Tired, worn out, she leaned against the railing, watching the bright lights and cold wind of the city wash over her. A warm hand suddenly covered hers. </p><p>Miranda glanced up into Andrea’s doe-eyes, who guided her carefully back into the room and gently lifted the glass out of her hand. </p><p>God-fucking-damnit. </p><p>Andrea still held her hand as her divorce papers sat glaringly on the coffee table. Miranda itched for another drink. </p><p>“Is there anything I can do?” </p><p>Miranda sighed. She avoided Andrea’s gaze. </p><p>“Your job.” </p><p> </p><p>The next time Miranda swore to God was the next night when Andrea left suddenly, though honestly, she really should’ve seen that one coming. </p><p>She called her lawyers and sent them the papers and promptly forgot about Andrea Sachs and God and everything to do with her Judaism. </p><p>Tired. There was a weight on her shoulders and Miranda didn’t think it would ever leave. </p><p> </p><p>Before, Andrea Sachs pranced into her life in the goddamn ugliest outfit Miranda’d laid her eyes on and now, there was a slight improvement but not by much. Surely, you couldn’t screw up casual wear that badly, could you? </p><p>It was at a press event—what on Earth would a political reporter be doing at a fashion event, Miranda had no idea—when Andrea quite literally bumped into her in the washroom and Miranda teased her about her clumsiness and Andrea blushed. </p><p>She looked quite lovely, Miranda decided. (Miranda was staring at the woman’s lips and wondered what tinted chapstick it was because it was very clearly not lipstick.) </p><p>Andrea stammered a little and all of a sudden, Miranda was kissing Andrea in the bathroom that was in the Elias-Clare lobby and Andrea was kissing her back. </p><p>“I’m—” Miranda sputtered. </p><p>“Shut up,” Andrea said and kissed her again. </p><p>Miranda felt lighter than she had in years. </p><p> </p><p>“Miranda? It’s your brother,” Andrea said, covering up the phone. Miranda’s head shot up. Nathan? <em> I didn’t know you had a brother, </em> Andrea mouthed as Miranda grabbed the line. Miranda glared at her and Andy went back to her laptop. </p><p>“Nathan?” Miranda said. The last time he had called it was a year ago and it was to confirm Miranda’s payments to care for their mother. </p><p>“Mother’s dead,” he said. </p><p>Miranda dropped the phone. </p><p>She scrambled to pick it up again as Andrea’s neck snapped up at the sound. </p><p>“Miriam?” Nathan asked. </p><p>“Yeah, I’m here,” she replied. She listened to her brother breathe. “I’ll, I’ll be there tomorrow.” </p><p>She tried to picture her brother nodding but found that she couldn’t quite remember what he looked like. Come to think of it, she barely remembered what her mother looked like. </p><p>“Okay, it’ll be good to see you, Miriam,” Nathan said. Miranda just nodded. </p><p>“Miranda?” </p><p>Andrea walked around the kitchen island and wrapped her arms around Miranda’s waist, resting her chin on Miranda’s shoulder. </p><p>“My mother’s dead,” she said. </p><p>Andrea hugged her tighter. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Do you want me to come with you?” </p><p>Miranda nodded. </p><p>“I haven’t stepped foot into a synagogue in decades,” Miranda said, staring ahead. </p><p>“Then we’ll share our first steps together,” Andrea said. </p><p>Miranda closed her eyes. </p><p>“Thank you,” she whispered. Andrea kissed her cheek. </p><p>She was fifty-two with three divorces, two daughters, and a hatred for God. </p><p>And Andrea tasted like the warm summer day that He was never able to give her. </p><p>
  <strong>FIN.</strong>
</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—’Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It may be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not’.” —John Steinbeck, <em> East of Eden </em></p>
</blockquote>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed this short little oneshot! Hopefully, there will be a longer story on the way as this was mainly an exercise to get back into the swing of things again. Again, I am not Jewish so please, please correct me if I made any mistakes. </p><p>If you enjoyed this story, please consider checking out <a href="https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/">this website</a> to support #blacklivesmatter. Every little bit counts!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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